


London Calling (The Battle Is Declared Remix)

by melliyna



Category: Law & Order: UK
Genre: Backstory, Female Friendship, Femslash, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Motherhood, Multi, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-03
Updated: 2012-12-03
Packaged: 2017-11-20 04:35:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/581357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melliyna/pseuds/melliyna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natalie Chandler has learned to wear her armour well, over the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	London Calling (The Battle Is Declared Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aubry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aubry/gifts).



> Title from _The Clash_ song 'London Calling' (inspiration from the song St James Infirmary as sung by Hugh Laurie and listening to Joan Jett on repeat) and a million thanks to my cheerleaders. Dear recipient - I hope you enjoy this and it works for you (it's particularly set in a canon swerve in which Matt is alive and in a relationship with Aleesha and James but it's not really relevant to the story as such).

Way back then Natalie Chandler had never have let a case get to her. 

You especially couldn't then (you can’t really now, even, not the way her male colleagues can, but it’s easier). There’s a reason they call her “Chandler the ice queen” but it’s better than ‘couldn’t hack it girl’ that one of her year mates at Hendon got (and that was the kindest). 

Even after Matt. Maybe especially after Matt, though he lived, it was never going to be the same. 

But she’d learned her lessons long ago - don’t cry, don’t let your bloody voice shake and don’t, don’t whatever you do, give in to a request to make tea for any misogynistic dickhead of a DC. Natalie Chandler knows that. She’s trained herself to know it. It means precisely nothing of course yes, things do bloody get to her now. She can just manage it better. But it doesn’t mean she doesn’t care. 

(It’s why she did nearly punch that DI who called her ‘ice queen b__’ to her face. Her younger self would have done, but the Natalie Chandler who is now knows how to get even long term). 

-

She’d been young, when she started at Hendon. Had bunked off a university place for the grit, grime (well it wasn't actually that grimy, whatever her parents thought of the plebeian coppers) and the mud. And her two best friends in the world. There was Greg (who she didn't sleep with - though he was certainly beautiful enough for it he had a serious girlfriend and then a serious boyfriend and then he met his wife) and Kate, who she most definitely dated. 

(They still joke about how many places they managed to shag without getting caught. Kate’s wife finds it more than a bit hilarious). 

Greg taught her to swear in French and how to make the best croissants she’s ever had. Kate taught her how to love, how to match wine with dinner and the various uses you can make of sharp objects. They all argue about music (Greg loves Jazz, Kate thinks his and Natalie’s taste in Buddy Holly is crap and they all agree on the fact that they worship The Clash and that Sympathy for the Devil is best heard on vinyl) and smoke far too much. Natalie wears leather (she still does), goes to dive bars that young police constables are generally not supposed to go to, gets tattoos (she still has those to, there’s a story in each of them), argues Tudor history and feminism with punks and suits and fellow queers and generally enjoys herself. 

Cases didn't touch her then. She carried her job lightly, in the way that only a brash young personality with armour and sarcasm can. She went to the pub with team, after some cases, yes and had too much beer and played snooker till late, but she’d known what she was in for. They didn't stay with her. It became a parade of grieving faces, late at night and in the early morning and she ends up volunteering for far more raids and arrests than for those late night calls. 

They sat lightly with her, though yes, she did care but she’s not like Greg, who’s a natural at empathy and kindness and dealing with children (they both get shit for being the way they are, just from different directions). She is however damn good at interrogations and questioning and from there, she discovers how to deal with people. 

-

It’s when she makes Sergeant that the cases start to get to her. She’s no longer twenty but she is still on the career track and she finds herself in plain clothes and to her amazement, a natural at being a DS. For that she credits the unit she started out in - Vice. It’s headed by two women - DI Williams and DCI Larke and they show her how to have your peoples back and how not to tolerate crap or corruption. It’s an amazing and terrible job. 

Amazing because of her bosses and her colleagues - this Vice team is the team with the ‘queers, the minorities and the ladies’ as one of the other Sergeants who is all three puts it and they know, as no one else might, what they've had to do and put up with to get here. It’s amazing for the successes and terrible for the failures that start to become haunting. 

Natalie Chandler knows these stories and she doesn't have the armour for them. Not yet. She sees the friends who have been left bloody and bruised over the years, the girlfriends who were raped and whom no one cared about. The domestic violence in which it’s clear no one else gives a shit (and more often than not it’s the police, the courts and the system in general, don’t think she doesn't know that) and she starts to battle it, her and her squad. But sometimes it’s not enough. Sometimes it’s never enough. 

She meets Ronny Brooks when they are both young (well Ronnie is younger than he is now) and drinking in a pub. He’s a DC at a neighbouring station and they have what is really very excellent sex and an excellent amount of conversation. He’s not drinking then (not so much) and he’s between wives. When he proposes continuing their relationship when he gets married again she decks him and surprisingly, he sees her point. 

When she gets command of MIU she offers him a Sergeant job again and the chance to be more if he gets help. It actually doesn't surprise her that he does, whatever anyone may think. She knows herself enough to know when she gets her judgement of people right and she knows Ronnie Brooks is better than this, just like she knows Greg is going to be a wonderful parent and Kate looks gorgeous pregnant. And she’s started to learn her armour. 

And then she meets Mark. Mark who is the definition of gentle (though he’s strong, her Mark. People forget that, when they meet him and see only his gentleness). She does worry over him. It’s about when Ben is born that things change, in the way that these things do. She trusts Mark, she absolutely trusts Mark and she knows her babies (when Daniel and Alexander come along it’s the same) will be safe, but every time she comes across a case involving a child it’s another chink of her armour to build. It changes, as they grow. 

When they’re teenagers she starts worrying about getting a call about them. When Ben goes off to university she tries not to think of all the statistics she knows because she and Mark have raised them better than that. 

-

And then there’s MIU. She’d never say it, before, but Matty is her son to. Her and Ronnie’s both, just as Aleesha is the daughter of their hearts. After Matty is shot, Natalie Chandler lets her armour shatter in private. After he recovers, she lets him see her cry. After Aleesha is raped, she holds her, in quiet moments behind closed doors because you need to keep your armour up, if you’re Natalie Chandler. It’s just the way it is. It’s what she’s learned. 

And then there’s Aleesha and Jamie and Matt, who fall in love and fall in to babies and domesticity and she’s fiercely protective of them (she did threaten to deck a fellow DI over them, actually. Ronnie was the calm one), just as she is of the boys who who she carried. 

And it strengthens her armour and the heart. 

She does a better job for it, for all of it.


End file.
